Chairs
Though the text and its imagery are scattered, there are several recurrences. For examples, chairs are featured multiple times throughout the text. They are first mentioned in the work's first section, in a poem entitled "The Substance in A Cushion" and then in the titular poem "Chairs," though they are later mentioned in both "Food" and "Objects." The importance of chairs cannot be easily discerned. It is evident that they assume a position beyond that of mere furniture Stein writes "seeing a chair did that mean relief, it did" and later "the care with which there is a chair and plenty of breathing." In this manner, chairs represent a means of comfort and reliability.
Oranges
The section "Food" contains a succession of poems entitled "Orange," "Orange," "Oranges" and "Orange In." Despite the prevalence of the word, it is only mentioned in the first and last poem of the sequence. In "Orange," Stein writes "why is it orange center" and in "Orange In" she repeats the line "cocoa and clear soup and oranges and oat-meal." Again, it is not clear what symbolic value Stein invests in the fruit; however it can be surmised that oranges were particularly exotic and hard to acquire at the time of Tender Buttons' writing. They could thusly be seen as amongst the peculiar and queer objects that Stein sought to exhibit.
Chicken
Also in the section "Food" Stein titles four consecutive poems "Chicken." In the first she writes, "pheasant and chicken, chicken is a peculiar third." in the next she writes, "alas is a dirty word, alas a dirty third alas a dirty third, alas a dirty bird." This can be read as an innuendo, in which chicken stands in for the sexualized word cock, or a "chicken" as a cowardly person. Stein continues along this trajectory in the final poem of the sequence, writing "sticking with a chicken. Sticking in with a extra succession, sticking in." This is blatantly sexual reference. The chicken is a means of portraying veiled themes that would otherwise be deemed taboo, but also demonstrating the ways in which the meanings of objects can be altered to represent such themes.
Potatoes and Roast Potatoes
In the middle of "Food" Stein includes two poems entitled "Potatoes" followed by one entitled "Roast Potatoes." Each of the poems is a single sentence. It is not the content of the poems that matters as much as their ordering. Stein places "Roast Potatoes" after the plainly-titled "Potatoes." Stein is suggesting a treatment or changing of the potato. As in cooking, an object, or objects are manipulated so as to create a new object. In this way, Stein is pointing towards the power that humans possess to alter and change the objects around them.
Eating
Amidst the "Food" section, Stein includes a set of four poems, one titled "Dinner," one "Dining," and two "Eating." Located within a group of poems about food, these poems symbolize the role of humans as consumers of objects. For example, "Roastbeef" and "salad" do not exist unless humans are there to create, cook, and eat them. Humans, in this sense, possess a dominion or mastery over the objects of food. This is a symbol of how Stein views her position amongst the "objects," "food," and "rooms" of which she writes.
